Johannesburg - Gunmen have stormed into a school, ordering matriculants writing an accounting prelim exam to lie down on the floor of the hall.

The 54 matric pupils and four staff members of the Oxford Combined School in Kempton Park were held at gunpoint while the school was being robbed.

A pastoral counsellor spoke to the matriculants on Wednesday.

School principal Pierre de Lange said the children "came off scot-free, thank the Lord".

Someone beating school secretary

The robbers made off with about R7 000 and two cellphones.

De Lange and his deputy, Ann de Villiers, were supervising the exam at about 13:20 on Wednesday in a hall adjacent to the office block.

He heard a noise in the office.

While he was on his way there, he heard someone beating Elizabeth Sithole, the school secretary.

De Lange said he saw a man carrying a pistol, hitting and forcing Sithole under a table.

De Lange, who recently underwent a hip replacement operation, was beaten with his crutch, thrown down and kicked.

Meanwhile an armed man entered the hall through a side door and told De Villiers and the pupils to lie down.

De Villiers said she didn't know where she got the strength from, but she kept on speaking to the children and telling them "to lie still."

Overpowered the guard

"The two men I saw were very self-assured. They swore and asked: 'Where's the money?'"

De Lange said the men apparently gained access to the premises by overpowering the guard at the gate and forcing him, with a firearm jammed in the small of his back, to walk through to the school entrance.

Luckily the incident took place "about five minutes before the pupils were supposed to hand in their exam papers," De Lange said.

At 4.15am on November 13 2005, Collette Borain awoke inside a horror-movie scene.
Her husband Christopher was being butchered by a gang of robbers armed with steak knives and a long breadknife. The lights were off and the room would have been completely dark were it not for a full moon outside and the thin Roman blinds.

During the bloody struggle - which lasted several minutes - the breadknife sunk into the wooden bed and snapped. One of the robbers grabbed it and smashed it into Collette's face twice - luckily the blade had broken off and the handle was bare. Her nose began to bleed.

'That night was like a photograph. The faces have stayed with me for almost two years'

She stared into the faces of the attackers for two seconds - the image burning into her memory - before standing up on the bed, screaming and reaching for the panic button.

By the time she pressed the button and forced the three robbers to flee, her husband had been stabbed 17 times.

The pair then ran to the next room to check whether their two daughters - aged 3 and 5 - were safe. They were.

But Christopher had been cut on his chin, neck, arm, chest and hand.

On Wednesday, while testifying against the alleged members of the Sandton Knife Gang, Collette said the intruders' faces had haunted her.
'I must have been mistaken. I don't guess'

"That night was like a photograph. The faces have stayed with me for almost two years," she said.

Four days after the attack, Collette helped police officers to draw up identikits of the two men she saw.

She had called the officers and asked them to hurry while the images were fresh in her mind. She didn't know they would stay with her for so long.

The identikits were handed in to court on Wednesday as evidence against the gang charged with breaking into at least 18 secure complexes in and around Sandton.

The gang broke in unarmed and used their victims' kitchen knives to hold the families hostage while they ransacked their homes - sometimes making off with goods worth up to R700 000.

Magistrate Renier Boshoff reviewed the identikits and said there was a "remarkable resemblance" between the image and one of the accused Collette pointed out in court.

The brave woman not only had to come face to face with the men she believes almost murdered her husband, but she also came under fire during cross-examination.

Lawyer Oliver Moeti asked her whether she was "out of this world" or "extraterrestrial" for being able to recognise her attackers after seeing them for just two seconds.

He grilled her about making one unsuccessful identification at a police line-up last year.

He said she could not have clearly seen the faces of the robbers in a dark room and was "guessing".

"I must have been mistaken. I don't guess," Collette shot back, referring to the line-up.

At the Borains' River Club home the police found two steak knives in the garden and the broken breadknife in the bed.

Christopher had to have surgery on five of the wounds and his arm was in a cast for eight weeks to help heal the cut nerves. He still has no feeling in several fingers.

The couple lost two cellphones and two watches during the robbery.

During his testimony, Christopher said "the sharp steak knives did most of the damage".

Rene Heitner, another victim, took the stand and testified how he and his wife were tied up for more than an hour and robbed.

The 64-year-old paediatrician said the robbers grabbed a breadknife and used it to threaten them during the May 8 2006 attack.

While taking off his wife's ring, one of the robbers asked how many carats each diamond was.